BENGALURU: The Bharatiya Janata Party has pulled up its Madhya Pradesh candidate and two Karnataka leaders, both sitting MPs, for their remarks on Mahatma Gandhi’s assassin Nathuram Godse. The Congress leadership in the State sees no point in BJP seeking an explanation instead of taking action.
BJP national president Amit Shah took to Twitter to distance the party from statements made by Bhopal MP candidate Pragya Singh Thakur and Karnataka MPs Nalinkumar Kateel and Anant Kumar Hegde.
“Statements made by Anant Kumar Hegde, Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur and Nalinkumar Kateel in the last two days are their personal opinions. Those statements have no connection whatsoever to the BJP. They have withdrawn their personal statements and have also apologised for it. However, keeping in mind the public sentiment and the dignity and ideology of the BJP, it has been decided to refer this to the disciplinary committee. The committee will seek an explanation from all three leaders and has been instructed to submit a report within ten days to the party,” tweeted Amit Shah.
The opposition, however, believes that the purported action is a mere eyewash. “By then @AmitShah, the election will be done and dusted and nobody is going to care, cos you’ll be left to recover from you’re party’s humiliating defeat” said Dinesh Gundu Rao, Congress state president. A host of Congress leaders condemned Hegde and Kateel’s statements with minister D K Shivakumar deeming the culture “dangerous”.
“Godse was inspired by Sangh Pariwar’s ideology & so is Pragya. Former killed our Mahatma & the latter killed Mahatma’s children. Pragya who calls Godse a patriot is endorsed by @narendramodi Is this the sign of an attempt to proliferate Sangh’s hatred based ideology? “ asked Congress Legislature Party leader Siddaramaiah on his Twitter timeline.
Hegde and Kateel - who are infamous for making communal statements - took to Twitter to back Pragya and support Godse. All their tweets, however, have been deleted now. While Kateel apologised for his tweets, Hegde claimed that his account was hacked and someone else had tweeted the controversial statements. The minister was heavily trolled for it.
“I have observed that my previous two tweets have drawn a lot of flak. I apologise if my tweets hurt anyone. It was not my intention to hurt anybody. I have withdrawn the tweets as soon as I realised that it has hurt sentiments. Let us end the discussion here,” tweeted Kateel on Friday. On Thursday he had drawn parallels between Godse, Ajmal Kasab and former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi asking who was the bigger terrorist.
“My account was hacked since yesterday. There is no question of justifying Gandhi ji’s murder. There can be no sympathy or justification of Gandhi ji’s murder. We all have full respect for Gandhi ji’s contribution to the nation,” Hegde tweeted on Friday in a desperate attempt to defend himself. On Thursday, he had said he “was glad that seven decades later today’s generation debates in a changed perceptional environment and gives good scope for the condemned to be heard upon. Nathuram Godse would have finally felt happy with this debate.”